DirtyDees DDC

Just saw that too. That clarifies things. Let's hope he has a great pre-season.

I went to training 3 times during the last pre-season. On every occasion Col was in the modified training group. I don't know if he has injuries that require on-going management, although i admit it's odd he was available for the IR series. I believe when he was drafted his weakness was his endurance. The funny thing is - he looks really fit. He's 'cut' and he never seems out of shape. Maybe he prefers working out with those Zumba dance videos to burning his legs and lungs on the running track.

From 'The Age' this morning - 'More recently, his father Phil's acceptance of a full-time recruiting job at the Giants has caused controversy, but Scully supported his dad's right to pursue his ambition and said the fact his wage had been included in the club's salary cap didn't worry him. ''It had nothing to do with me,'' he said.' What is he thinking? That the AFL have incorrectly linked his dad's salary to Tom's recruitment? Doesn't he see the blatant conflict of interest? Message to Tom; don't do puff news stories; sometimes they blow up in your face. And get a good media manager. Or just shut up.

It's one thing to support a coach when he says "we will have them physically fit and physically strong enough to play league footy", and he indicates he will be a very structured coach and expects his players to be the same. It looks like he has started with a clean slate 'no favourites' approach and that all sounds fine. I'm not surprised he queried our fitness levels. We seemed to stuggle at certain times this year (against Hawthorn after 1/2 time and against Collingwood in the last quarter). The crunch will come when certain crowd favourites fail to meet the new fitness levels, or don't adhere to the team structures. Will we still be happy if a player of lesser ability such as Bartram gets picked each week ahead of Tapscott or Jurrah? The article hints that Watts is sitting down with Dave Misson and learning about the game. I'm not sure it says the same good things about Davey and Sylvia. I have a feeling certain 'name' players will be out of the club by end of 2012 unless they can change their ways.

Those are only projections. I believe the Bentleigh club was struggling to pay its way when they merged with the MFC. I'm not saying the merger was a bad thing; we had by far the lowest asset base of any Melbourne based club and we needed to get bigger. This deal should work, provided we manage the debt and we don't get a burst in the property bubble.

It wasn't just the 186 match that stuffed him. It was a series of bad performances this year. We were 28 points up against the Hawks in rd 2 and got done by 46 odd pts. We played arguably the worst 1st quarter of football this year against West Coast and got done. We were leading Nth by 4 goals early in the second. They came back and doubled that margin in 2 quarters. We were terrible against Carlton in our first friday night match of the year. We let Collingwood kick the last 10 goals against us in our marquee match on Queens Birthday. And in a match we started favourites, we got overrun by the Bulldogs to lose by 60 points. Robert Walls is wrong. Bailey wasn't dismissed just because of one bad game. The 186 game was simply the final straw in Deans tenure at the MFC.

From the website - hopefully correct - The next open training session is: Gosch's Paddock - Monday 7th November - 10:00am

Maybe Evans?

Any hints on that? Didn't he stay at the Swans from 2001 to 2007, and the saints from 2008?

And attitude too. He also said you need both. He's measuring our performance against a recent premier team and a grand finalist. He'll know what we need to produce to achieve results.

Have a listen to the interview with Dave Misson. He has some interesting comments on our current performance. He mentioned that the 3 front runners were good (Jones, Bail and Nicholson) but there were probably a few guys at the back that needed to improve - 'definitely room for improvement'. He was asked his impressions of the first week, and he said the effort had been great. He used the word 'effort' instead of 'performance'. He said he came to MFC with a lot of data from his previous clubs (Swans and Saints) on how they performed over 3k, so he will compare the figures later today. He said the attitude was good and they have a lot of new things to take in, such as adjusting to MJs new game plan. Next open training time - monday 7th Nov 10 am.

Thanks for the clarification. Be interesting to see who joins this group in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully Clark, Grimes and Jurrah.

Am I reading this right? Out of our current list of 40 odd players, there are only 7 who are in the elite training group? That's not great. I'll excuse the 3 guys on international duties, and highlight Watts who stepped up to have a crack at the top level, but gee we want to be competitive next year. Surely Bennell and Morton - guys with 3-4 full pre seasons under their belt - surely they should be in the 'group of death'. Once again Sylvia and Davey are in the rehab group, along with too many teammates. I read somewhere that most of the rehab group are not far off full training. I should hope so. I think they're in for a shock from Misson and co.

They should have suspended him from round 12.

'I believe in Tom'.

Let's hope Sylvia learns his lesson. Let's hope he also gets fully involved in pre-season training. Last year it appeared he was parked with the modified training group. Yet he looks fit; maybe he needs to work on his aerobic capacity instead of his washboard abs.

Any parent would have been thrilled to see their son get offered $6m over 6 years at such a young age. What a great chance to set himself up for life. But no, they wanted more. So sad. Phil - do the right thing and knock back the offer.

This $6m $cully story broke on the rumour file in early feb. Late Feb I spoke to a local Melbourne supporter who said he had a very strong connection to Phil Scully. Apparently Phil has an involvement with one of the south eastern football leagues. He said Phil was adamant the story was a beat up; that the first the Scully family heard of it was in the media, and that Tom was perfectly happy at Melbourne. My contact said don't worry; looks like Tom will be staying at Melbourne. That's why i believed Tom would reject any offer from GWS. In hindsight there was too much smoke. The media was correct; the amount was correct; and i believe Sylvagni has stated an approach was made to the Scullys during their window of opportunity in Oct 2010. When did the Scullys first make an expression of interest to GWS? Maybe when they kept to a two year deal mid 2010, after Trengove and Tapscott agreed to 3 year deals. Maybe it was shortly after being drafted. Some have indicated he never looked happy here. Maybe it was shortly after Jordan McMahon kicked THAT goal in 2009. A loss by Richmond would have put them at the bottom of the ladder, giving them a first pick and a chance to recruit a kid who was a mad keen Richmond supporter. Perhaps he was not impressed with our 'list management' and thought he didn't owe us anything. He may become a champion player, but he won't do it at a champion club. At least not for 6 years, till he returns to live in Melbourne.

I taped that match, thinking 'oh this will be good - a replay of the superbowl of a couple of years ago'. Not quite. No Payton Manning - no colts. It seems that the offensive units are creaming the defences this year. There are too many good experienced quarterbacks, and too many rookies on the backline.

Would it help if he lost about 5 kgs? Bate played in the midfield at Casey late last season and got a stack of it. He also spent some time rotating thru the middle in 2010. Losing 5 kilos would bring him back to about 87 kgs - the average weight for an AFL footballer. It doesn't sound much, but try carrying 5 extra kilos around a big paddock for 3 hours on a sunday afternoon. This could be one of the re-design projects for Misson and Craig.

Do you mean Leon Davis? He's just walked out on Collingwood.

Get Watts on one wing and Davey on the other. The two fastest players in the side.

What? No Watts? Maybe a midfield forward possy for Jack, till he bulks up. It's much easier to pick the forwards with a big versatile 200cm target as one of the options. Neeld said on Saturday that he has a number of different possibilities; he just has to find the right combination. A bit like Melbourne Victory atm.

An excerpt - "Harrington said Melbourne was delighted to secure Clark after the Demons “stuck to their plan and persevered” with him. “We had targeted specific objectives and we had a course of action where we thought ‘this is how we’ll play it’,” he said. “It’s no secret that we have a real need for a big-bodied presence in our forward line to compliment a range of players we have in our forward line." If we had failed to get Clarke, who else was available? Have we just selected the only experienced player 'on the market' who could fulfill our need for a big-bodied presence on our forward line? I'll assume here that we asked Tippett and he was not interested in playing in Victoria. Other websites are saying we paid too much for him, but the price is not the real issue here. We don't have salary cap issues and we only had to give up pick 12 which seems a fair trade. I also don't think we could have drafted an 18 yo at pick 12 in this years draft with the same height, weight and mobility as Clark. The new coach needs immediate results next year - and Clark is 24 and ready to go. The big bucks were paid to stop him from returning home to Perth. That was to our disadvantage, but we also lucky. He scared off other clubs by clearly stating he was not available. It never hurts to ask.

We have a new coach and a new footy department that may have a different view of Warnock than the previous coaching staff. We may try to keep him if we don't get a good offer from elsewhere.